I was sad to learn of Ken Yankelevitz's death earlier this year (31st of August 2016). Ken was very likely the first person to build and sell accessible controllers in mainstream gaming magazines and he did it at a loss so that controllers were affordable. Atari would recommend people to him directly if in need of alternative controllers in the early 80s at a time when Atari was the biggest video gaming company on the planet.

Ken's family put together a folder including some testimonies from the many people he helped along the way, which I'm told brought him and his family great comfort and happiness. Learn a little more about Ken's work here and here.

eSports slightly bemuses me in some ways as I'd rather play than watch, but it's certainly coming of age. Here it is, perhaps at it's birth, in 1975 on the UK Children's television programme, Crackerjack in the form of competitive Football-Pong (about 3 and a half minutes in).

All via TheVerge.com: ...Miyamoto says that Nintendo has been toying with the idea of a one-button Mario game since the days of Wii. “As we were doing those experiments, we thought that that kind of approach would perhaps best be suited to iPhone,” he says. “So that became the basis for Super Mario Run"...

But whether it was for Wii or iPhone, the goal behind this streamlined Mario was the same: to bring the distinct flavor of Super Mario to as many people as possible. “Nintendo has been making Mario games for a long time, and the longer you continue to make a series, the more complex the gameplay becomes, and the harder it becomes for new players to be able to get into the series,” Miyamoto says. “We felt that by having this simple tap interaction to make Mario jump, we’d be able to make a game that the broadest audience of people could play.”

Shawn Layden (introducing the Accessibility panel at the Sony Playstation Experience 2016 on the 4th of December at 2pm):

"I wanted to be on stage today to tell you how important this next panel is to our community, to our business, to our life, to what we do as Playstation gamers.... the accessibility panel is here to talk about how to make games more accessible to all gamers of all walks of life.... We are a diverse bunch, the Playstation Nation..... The ideal is that every gamer should be able to have all the different gaming experiences that we can possibly bring to them, it's important for Playstation. We really want to be leaders in this field."

This could be a race to the top with the big players. Nintendo, are you listening? Here's some really useful contacts in large Game Companies Interested in Game Accessibility. Contact them if you'd like to be heard: